Socio-economic situation remains stable despite COVID-19 outbreak: PM

The Government's meeting in Hanoi on March 3 (Photo: VNA)

At the Government’s regular meeting on March 3, the Cabinet leader said thanks to the political system’s activeness, drastic and effective actions, and the spirit of “fighting the disease is like fighting enemies”, COVID-19 prevention and control efforts have reaped encouraging outcomes.

He repeated the Government’s consistent viewpoint of being ready to sacrifice economic benefits to protect the health of people and visitors to Vietnam.

According to the PM, Vietnam has stayed calm and sober in assessing the issue, and it has been ready to respond to every circumstance. The localisation of hotbeds has been carried out in a drastic and timely manner, while the quarantine of Vietnamese citizens and foreigners who travelled through coronavirus-hit areas has proved effective.

Thanks to these efforts, the COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam has been minimised although the country shares a long border with China, where the epidemic started. So far, there have been only 16 infection cases in Vietnam, and all of them have fully recovered, PM Phuc noted.

He lauded the efforts being made by various sectors, especially the military, police and health forces, and localities nationwide, adding that nearly 10,000 people have undergone quarantine and received care from local authorities and military units.

Vietnam has recorded no new SARS-CoV-2 infection cases over the last 18 days, he noted.

However, as the disease has spread to 67 countries and territories, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised the global risk assessment of the infection to “very high”, it is necessary to take drastic actions to continue disease prevention and control tasks to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in the community, PM Phuc said.

The PM pointed out that the outbreak has greatly influenced all major economies around the world. In Vietnam, it has heavily impacted air transport, tourism, services, and especially value chains, leading to an interruption in the supply of input materials.

Despite that fact, the socio-economic situation in February basically remained stable, PM Phuc said, noting that the consumer price index (CPI) declined, budget revenue increased, funding for anti-disease work was provided in a timely manner, and agriculture developed stably.

He asked Government members to discuss financial – banking solutions and other measures to facilitate production and business activities to realise their development targets.

At the meeting, the Ministry of Planning and Investment reported that many areas fell in the first two months from the same period last year, such as the disbursed and registered FDI capital. Retail sales of goods and consumer service revenue, as well as foreign arrivals in Vietnam, also witnessed slower growth

However, there remained many positive points to the socio-economic situation, the ministry said.

Macro-economic stability has been maintained, and the February CPI fell 0.17 percent month on month. Meanwhile, exports in the first two months grew 2.4 percent year on year to 36.9 billion USD, and agricultural development has remained stable.

More than 17,400 businesses with registered capital of almost 364 trillion VND (15.7 billion USD) were established in the two months, up 9.1 percent and 47.1 percent, respectively. Nearly 12,000 firms also resumed operations, up 17.1 percent.